League Watch: Just a Number

Sometimes you think you’re ready for something. Then you get it. 

I’ve been trying to get my USTA rating bumped to 4.0 for a couple of years now. Last year, I won almost all my singles matches, but didn’t do so great in doubles. Still, I was sure I was about to get the bump. I didn’t and so I came into this season with a chip on my shoulder and a promise: You want to keep me at 3.5? I’m going to make everyone sorry about it. And I did, mowing down (almost) all takers at that level. I’m still a little mad about one match and I will get my vengeance, in this life or the next. (I quote "Gladiator" a lot on this blog.)

But then that got boring. And someone told me that in addition to killing it at 3.5, I should also play 4.0. So I did that, too, and the matches got more challenging, but I was holding my own. I don’t want to brag (but why not?), but I even had a winning record in 4.0 play this year: 12-3. Notably, in singles, that record is 3-3.

I was feeling pretty good about myself and my play. And then fall season came. I was playing in all kinds of combo leagues at differing skill levels and I think it messed me up. I had one partner I would always win with, but everything else was a shot in the dark. I found myself overcompensating for partners, trying to play safely so I could win. Why? So I could be a 4.0. Except who the hell wins at 4.0 like that? Not me. So the last few months have been a doozy.  

Part of it could be playing too much and I did play in 10 leagues this year, which is probably a little too much in retrospect. The other problem I noticed was that I was not as dominant in singles as I had been. Yes, better players, but I was starting to wonder if I was getting Too Old for This. I’ve always been a slow starter, especially in singles, but in all my matches, I was just playing terribly. There were 2 or 3 matches where I had to chuckle at myself for having taken the match to tiebreaks, because I was stinking it up. Which meant I was maybe doing something right? But not very right, because the results.  

The last league match of the year for me was for a league I had joined with the intention of playing doubles with one of my favorite partners. The reality is that both of us ended mostly on singles duty, so there I was at first singles feeling like ... well, not first. Or even second. I realized shortly after arriving that I was playing against my old team. I realized that when I went up to speak to a few of them and they acted like I had the plague. (Guys, life is too short for that nonsense.) 

Anyway, then I realized my opponent was someone I had gone the distance against the previous year. Mostly what I remember about that match is that I was on my period and not in the best mood. I snapped at her for a line call for waiting a half-second too late, a call that was totally fine, and I had to tell her the next time I saw her why, and apologize. We had a good laugh. But I knew that this was going to be a pain in the ass, especially with my confidence in the basement as it was. 

We got started. Well, she got started. I just stood around watching winners whiz past me. It was nice. Good breeze. The crazy part was that I didn’t feel as if I was playing badly – she was hitting a clean ball and playing smart. Even with that, I held game points and couldn’t convert them.  

You know what I said about a slow start. 0-6 is a pretty slow start. All I could do was dig in my heels and keep going. But in the back of my head? Yeah, I was thinking I was too old for this maybe. I was able to win the first game of the second set and get on the board. But every game was a struggle and it felt like every positive step I took was erased by an error or a great shot from my opponent. In the middle of the set, I began to (sort of emptily) repeat my mantra to myself: “Inhale confidence. Exhale execution.” Which got me thinking about a conversation I’d just had with my boyfriend about confidence and what it really means. Debbie Millman has a definition that just stuck with me. I reminded myself of it on the baseline: Confidence is the successful repetition of an endeavor, a task. (You should listen to this whole interview if you’re a late bloomer in anything. It’s just *chef’s kiss.*) I told myself: You’ve won points before. You’ve won games before. You’ve won matches before. You have earned confidence. 

Sometimes my self-talk game can be counterproductive, but something happened when I reminded myself that I knew how to play tennis. I began hitting my spots on the court. I began serving better. I bricked my volleys, which wasn’t a surprise, but after I did, I reset myself and kept going. I ran almost everything down, keeping points alive until my opponent missed. I realized that there was this one thing I could do that would always pull an error out of her, and I did it until I was serving at 5-3. Then I coughed up four errors quickly, and then we were at 5-all! Sigh. One second, I was killing it. The next, I was shooting myself in the foot and bleeding out on court. The problem, I think, was that it had been a minute since I had felt confident of my ability to close a match out. So I was getting to the precipice and then just standing there.  

Bizarrely, I won the set tiebreak pretty fast. But now, there was a 10-point tiebreak for the match. And again, I built a lead. And again, I watched it disappear mostly due to bad decisions or straight-up errors. Then, at 9-all, I double-faulted. Which, my goodness. I stood at the line to now face a match point and I was angry and nervous and pissed and then my second serve landed in the box, and then I just played. I thought a lot about not making a stupid mistake but I left a ball sort of short. When she hit it out, I just took a long pause, and dug my heels in again.  

I don’t remember much after that, not that there was much more to remember. We played only two more points after that and I won them both.  

The next morning, my doubles partner sent me a note of congratulations and in glancing at it, thought it was about the match. No. The early-start ratings for USTA had come out and I was officially a 4.0. The timing made me chuckle.

You know I like a visual. Here's one I'm really digging on right now:

  

Oh, a low 4.0? Let's see what we can do about that.  

            

It's How You Play the Game

When I got into tennis, it was the late 1990s and Venus Williams was beginning to run the show. I wasn’t just a fan, I was learning the game as well, so I tried to mimic what I saw in Venus and the top American women at the time – her sister Serena and Lindsay Davenport.  

This is why I don’t even count my first few years playing tennis as playing tennis. I was out of control, trying to swing ferociously like a professional who had been doing it forever and actually had sound technique to assist with that power. . I was strong and fast so it worked – if I was playing a complete beginner. Otherwise, it didn’t translate and I was getting beat by anyone who could make me hit more than two balls. The Williams sisters played first-strike tennis, and that was what I tried to do. 

It never occurred to me that there was another way to play tennis until I began watching Rafael Nadal Parera play. I’m not gonna lie – I came for that beautiful ass and stayed for his game style. 

Anyone who was a fan at that point knew that it was Roger Federer who was asserting himself as a great. Pete Sampras set the record for slams won and now no one talks about him because Roger was that dominant, that quickly. And then, Rafael Nadal beat him. How was it possible? Any real tennis fan would be unable to deny the beauty of Roger’s game. The backhand. The graceful movement. The way his face stayed so still when he was hitting. (That was freakish, honestly.) And that was sort of the personality of tennis – grace, class, beauty.  

But Nadal showed up in capris (for way too long, IMO. I mean, that worked for him but no one else. Believe me, I used to play with guys who dressed like Nadal during this time and it was like yikeys) and charged like a bull at every ball, he grunted, and he never stopped. He was relentless. And it’s not like he didn’t have power – he did. That lefty forehand down the line on the run?  

I became a huge Nadal fan, just rabid. And as I watched him grind people down to their gears, it finally clicked for me. I finally figured out that I had speed and was strong enough. All I had to do was stay in a point long enough to get the advantage in a point. I realized that there was more than one way to play tennis. Blasting winners from the baseline was not me, mostly because I was completely incapable. But getting to everything? Refusing to give up? Making someone hit another shot, and then being able to do it for an entire match, regardless of the result? Maybe!  

So I began to think like Rafa when I played. I still do. And it never gets old watching my opponents scramble after I got to a shot they thought I had no play on. I tried to be like Rafa – using my body to play defense when I needed to, but going for my chance when I had an opening. I think he’s a little better at it, even still. 

I’m saying that there’s more than one way to play tennis and if it weren’t for Rafael Nadal, I probably wouldn’t know that. Nobody hustled like Nadal on court in his prime, tracking down almost every ball, leaving opponents off-balance and chipping away at those opponents’ will to live.

There's a life lesson in there too. Rafa and Roger did a Louis Vuitton ad together a few months back and they were asked how they wanted to be remembered. "I achieved more than what I ever dreamed of," Rafa answered. Dreams happen when you're asleep. Achievements happen when you work unceasingly and Rafa made that literally true on the court every time he went out there.   

Untitled

            On Election Day, my partner showed up for our match in a MAGA hat. 

            For the most part, I had managed to keep my tennis playing and politics separate. I live in a deep-red county in a red state, so my liberal views are in the minority. I’m at peace with this and am always pleasantly surprised when someone even insults a Republican policy out here. I’ve also learned that, out here, if I’m talking to someone who would be injured by Trump policies or his racist rhetoric, that does not mean that person is not a Trump supporter. It’s about 50-50. So I find the less I talk to people about their political beliefs on court, the more I can focus on tennis and keep folks at racquet-length. 

            So, Tuesday. My partner shows up to our match in a MAGA hat. She’s been a citizen for about a month. I wasn’t completely shocked by this display. When she sent out the last lineup of the season, our captain signed off with “Let’s Make America Great Again!” with some red, white and blue heart emojis. Then came an invite to election-night watch party, to which my partner replied, “My husband and I are garbage ...” When I checked in for the match, some lady was standing in the office saying, “He can do it, he can win!” As soon as she saw me, she tossed out an invite to watch results (not to me), and made a real quick exit. Earlier this summer when I went to sectionals, it was after Trump was shot at. There were women playing on the courts with bandages over their ears. 

            Anyway. My partner. She’s got the hat on and she’s just beaming. I wanted nothing to do with that hat on my side of court, but what was I going to do? Tell her to take it off? Not play? Nah, screw that. I came to play and if my partner wanted to dress up like a clown, then I just needed to step over the elephant dung at the circus. We won, and she asked to take a photo with me, as it was the last match of our season and we had been undefeated. I agreed. 

On my way to the car, I muted that group chat. I don’t make a secret of my political beliefs and as quick as I am about keeping the peace, the ladies on that team were just as quick to throw their beliefs in my face.  

I don’t have anything profound to say. Now that the results are in, it’s hard to say what’s different. I am surrounded by what I’ve always been surrounded by. I’ve seen Trump signs for the last nine years out here, solid. I am not a political sign person. I don’t have any Obama, Biden or Harris memorabilia, except saved newspapers from those historic days. I do have team sports jerseys, a couple. That what this is to a lot of people. If you look at it that way, then that’s a safe fandom, right? How often does your own team come to your house and tackle you, then dance in your endzone (the backyard in this analogy)?  

But here’s what I’m tired of not saying. Tennis is my sanctuary. I go there to play and take my mind off my life, to strategize. Even when I’m losing, I’m usually having a decent time and feel generally peaceful when it’s over. I can’t play tennis by myself and out here, the players are who they are. They believe what they believe. I can’t help that.  

I also can’t help that my family and I are originally from a place that would be considered a shithole country. I can’t help it that I remember Charlottesville, Virginia, and the immediate attempt at mass deportations. I can’t help that I remember his efforts to undo health care that covered more Americans that need it and the fact that he doesn’t have a plan for take care of those people, even now. I can’t help it that women have already been sick and dying because they haven’t been able to get the healthcare they need because he stacked the Supreme Court. I can’t help it that I’ve been reading about Trump for most of my life, being from New York. The mainstream media is not out to get him – he's been an awful and untalented, if privileged, man for as long as I can remember. I can’t help it – and I haven’t heard a compelling argument against this – that I believe that a vote for that man is a tacit approval of who he is and what he’s done and what he plans to do to the least of us. 

And what does it mean that there’s no tennis team I can join, precious few people I can even just hit with, who share my values in this deep-red place where logic seems impenetrable? Probably the most important thing it means is that these people are not my friends. They hug me. They ask after my family. They warm me up for matches. We joke and strategize. They’ve met my kids and been to my house. They invite me to lunch. They wear their ignorance and fear and hate on their heads and in our group chats. And I ... have been accommodating about it. For what? To make a point about not being judgmental?  

I don’t have anything profound to say. Because I’m not quitting tennis. But maybe I can apply what I’ve been told about tennis for years – to leave it, and these people – on the court. Then go home and find my people.